Initial impressions of the T8Pro

[dragonpoo]

Hi everyone! I got the T8Pro last week and have been playing with it, to see what I like and don't. I'll eventually post a review on Amazon based on some of these findings, but I figure this place is best for a discussion.

First, it's small. So very small, even for a mini PC, so we're talking about Raspberry Pi size. The space is used efficiently, although it's limited on what it offers. Three HDMI ports, three USB3-A ports, two network ports, a 3.5mm audio port, and power. There's no room for expansion with a TF/microSD card or internal hard drive, although it is too small for a 2.5" drive anyway. Also, it doesn't take a regular 2280 M.2 drive, as the system board is smaller than that; instead, it needs a 2242 M.2 drive.

However, that 2242 port can handle a NVMe drive. I pulled the original SATA SSD and installed a SK Hynix card that I purchased off Amazon, and it runs well. I haven't done performance testing on it, as I used it to run pfsense to get better use of those two gig NICs.

The NICs are Realtek gigabit (RTL8111/8168/8411, according to "pciconf -lv") and the wifi is also Realtek 802.11ac (RTL8821CE). No complaints about performance in general, and Windows, Ubuntu, and pfsense all seem to recognise them properly.

Included storage was a 256GB SATA FuturePath FD300-series. I've never heard of them, but researching on their website was pretty interesting (https://www.futurepath.com.cn/en/h-pd-4 ... mColId=112).

The BIOS was pretty new, build T8PRO001, released in October 2022. It shows the RAM was Samsung brand, 2400 LPDDR4, 2 channels of 4096 each, so 8GB total. Seeing dual channels was unexpected, but I expect this will be a positive impact on performance. There's some customization available in the BIOS, but I don't see most people tweaking it, and would avoid random changes.

It came with Windows 11 Pro, updated in July 2022, although it came with Edge build 90 from 2021. I'm not sure why that didn't get updated to match the OS. Device Manager didn't have any unknowns, and downloading drivers and updates was painless to get current. I did find it strange that the Windows didn't offer 22H2, and stayed on the original GA of Win11. I'll just update that manually.

I haven't tried any fancy performance testing or benchmark software yet. I did find this website: https://valid.x86.fr/5f5gwc which appears to be a CPUZ benchmark that somebody else ran, so you can see other details there.

Overall, I like this device. I still can't imagine a time when I'll need three screens and two network connections at the same time, but it's nice to have options!

[Gabe]

Now I'm looking forward even more to getting mine.

[dragonpoo]

Now I'm looking forward even more to getting mine.

Thanks, Gabe. It's a fun little system so I look forward to how your experience is.

[r_u]

I was very satisfied with the T8, I got one to use it exclusively as a router/modem with pfsense,
as it arrived i braised away windows without too much remorse, if there was a key, patience.

For me having two eth is crucial, because I need it to route between the LAN and a pppoe call on the WAN,
performance is great, wifi card shows on pciconf -lv but there is no trace on wireless configuration
of pfsense, in this case I don't investigate because I don't need it, I was disappointed however not to see entries in the bios for
completely disable wifi, bt and audio etc., the cpu always seems to be around 47 °C, despite being in the closet
ventilation of the servers and switches I have at home, the plastic cover of the T8 is not very efficient, you should
make it in aluminum thermally connected to the dissipation of the cpu and the other components, i would also have preferred that the
NICs were Intel and not Realtek, but at the moment they seem to work very well,
considering that with commercial routers/aps/modems like tp-link, fitzbox, mercusys, which i always used, my 1gb fiber performance, was 35mb/s peak per machine, now not only do the connections seem instantaneous, despite having an internal dns resolver "pihole" that works further,
but the connections per single machine exceed 80mb/s, I think it is proof that an x86_64 processor is superior to a mips processor for handling
of the tcp/ip stack and data streams.

When I download from steam from one of the LAN machines, the download speed almost immediately reaches the peak of 80mb and beyond, the T8 cpu at that moment it is at 3% and ram at 7% and the cpu temperature fluctuates from 45 to 49 °C.

I work in IT, I have a long experience with minipc, having to design entire LAN/WORKGROUP (just to be clear), I have mounted many Intel Nuc in the offices, to replace junk from the 90s/2000s, working on the concept of wasting less space/money/time.

In my humble opinion, you are very good at producing hardware, I don't know your other products, but the T8 is really a gem,
I have no idea how it behaves with windows, but with freeBSD it seems to be fine.

I advise you to continue this T8 line for desktops but also a new one for routing, because if such a gem also has a switch with 2.5Gb/s eth ports,
with a SFP-10GBase-T, and an additional wan with integrated optical GPON ONT, and if there was a wifi card, also external pins to extend the antennas, and only one usb/hdmi ,
would be ready for the next generation of network standards of offices, companies, "and even homes (we tend to underestimate how neglected and insecure they are)", or even for those who already have isp contracts higher than 1gb/s, and imagine it with a compact and well-dissipating design,
capable of being singly hung on the wall or integrated with brackets to a rack.

The T8 is really nice, congratulations, I hope for a bios update that allows me to disable the peripherals, because I could optimize consumption